Okuno Family Residence (Hirakata)

A northern Kawachi farmstead in Kasugamotomachi

Okuno Family Residence (Hirakata), known in Japanese as 奥野家住宅 (Okuno-ke Jūtaku), is a farmstead in Kasugamotomachi, Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, whose five buildings, centred on a main house of about 1830 to 1868, were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on May 2, 2017. Their registration numbers run consecutively, 27-0668 through 27-0672.

The five are the main house, a nagayamon gatehouse, a clothing storehouse, a rice storehouse and a tool storehouse. All were registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the main house as a record of how upper-tier farming families in northern Kawachi built their homes, and credits the storehouses and gate with shaping the look of the street and the yard.

A second Okuno Family Residence stands in Nakasakurazuka, Toyonaka, where eight structures were registered in 2008. The two properties sit in different cities and belong to different households; public records do not say whether the families are related. This page covers the Hirakata homestead only.

Five buildings, late Edo to early Meiji

Put the dates in order and the growth of the homestead comes into view. The main house, clothing storehouse and rice storehouse date to the closing decades of the Edo period. The gatehouse and tool storehouse came in the early Meiji years, between 1868 and 1882. The main house itself was reworked around 1902 and again around 1968.

The difference in scale is striking. The main house, single-storey with a partial upper floor, covers 262 square meters, and the gatehouse 74 square meters. The three storehouses are compact by comparison: 27 square meters for tools, 23 square meters for rice and 18 square meters for clothing. Separate stores for separate goods say a good deal about how the household organised its wealth.

All three storehouses share white Shikkui plaster above a skirt of wooden boards. The details diverge. The clothing storehouse wears a double band of thick plaster beneath the eaves on its gable ends, the tool storehouse a single band on its gables, and the rice storehouse small drip hoods on its gable walls. Read them as a ranking of the three buildings rather than the habits of one plasterer.

How the grounds are laid out

The Okuno Family Residence plot in Hirakata meets the street on its west side. Standing along that edge is the nagayamon, ten bays long, its street face fully plastered and its deep eaves carried on projecting joists, a method called segai-zukuri. This is the public face of the homestead.

The main house sits toward the north of the plot, facing south. The clothing storehouse lies behind it to the north, and the rice storehouse occupies the northwest corner, facing east. The tool storehouse stands south of the main house and faces north, so the two buildings look at each other across a yard, with the gatehouse closing the composition on the west. That picture can be pieced together from the agency descriptions.

From the street, the impression comes from the gatehouse and the white walls of the rice and clothing storehouses near the corner. That position is why the agency singles out those two storehouses for their contribution to the streetscape.

Visiting and getting there

Okuno Family Residence (Hirakata) is a private, lived-in home and its interiors are closed. As of September 2026 we found no announcements of open days or guided visits. Please stay off the property and view the exterior from the public road. No photography policy has been published, so be considerate: a quick shot of the gatehouse is one thing, lingering with a lens trained on doors and windows is another.

The nearest station is Tsuda on the JR Katamachi Line (Gakkentoshi Line); the homestead lies west of the station, roughly 1 kilometer in a straight line, or about 15 minutes on foot. The surrounding streets are residential with no visitor parking, so a car is not recommended.